Ellen Van Dusen was born in Washington, DC and raised by architect parents in a vibrant, creative home . As a child, she sponge-painted her own clothes with her mom; as a teenager, she altered and re-dyed thrift store discoveries; in college, through a self-directed major at Tufts University, she studied the psychology of design and the brain's reaction to visual stimuli. After graduating, she founded Dusen Dusen, a line of universally flattering basics driven by the prints she creates from scratch each season. Her inspiration is drawn from far-flung and unexpected places, like mid-century resort architecture, Italian industrial design, Scandinavian textiles, Google maps and handwriting, but all of her production is done in the USA.